A Bethlehem Department of Public Works engineer said Friday that work on a new span to replace the closed High Street Bridge on the city’s border with Hellertown could begin in the summer of 2015, if the project goes out to bid in the spring as currently expected.
The High Street Bridge has been closed to pedestrian and vehicular traffic since June 2011. The bridge is located within Bethlehem city limits, although its eastern end touches the border of Hellertown.
“We have the final design plans in hand,” said section engineer Kiel Fortner. “The city’s just waiting for the district–that would be PennDOT–to get on the ball in regards to pushing this forward.”
Fortner explained that replacing the small timber bridge built in 1910 was complicated by the fact that it was privately owned and spans an abandoned railroad culvert.
“The bridge was owned by Norfolk-Southern, and when it came time to abandon the bridge…the railroad wanted nothing to do with continuing to service this bridge or subsequently update it…because their railroad bed below is no longer active,” he said.
To make the replacement possible, a deal was negotiated between the city of Bethlehem and the railroad, with NS agreeing to pay for the engineering costs for the new bridge and the city agreeing to accept ownership and maintenance of the structure once it’s built.
PennDOT agreed to fully fund the construction of the new precast concrete bridge due to the unusual circumstances.
“This was kind of special,” Fortner said. “It wasn’t our bridge to begin with. We kind of took it on.”
The wooden structure will be replaced with a modern precast arched concrete structure with a road paved over it.
Although the Saucon Rail Trail currently extends only as far north as Bachman Street in Hellertown, the bridge will be built to accommodate a possible further northbound extension into the city, where it could ultimately connect with the South Bethlehem Greenway.
Fortner said the bridge has also been “designed…so that it would be not only accessible, but also inviting from an aesthetic and architectural standpoint.”
He said that assuming construction of the new bridge begins in the summer, construction will take roughly a year, meaning it will likely open in the early spring to summer of 2016.
Despite the fact that the reopened High Street extension will allow access to Ravena Street, it won’t extend the road beyond that because a metal truss bridge across the Saucon Creek about a quarter mile west of the High Street Bridge is expected to remain closed.
The Seidersville Road Bridge closed in January 2011 and is also located within city limits, but is county-owned, and officials have said there are no plans to replace it.
